


Untitled

by openhearts



Category: House M.D.
Genre: F/M, the one where house gives wilson speed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-14
Updated: 2008-10-14
Packaged: 2018-10-09 07:42:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10407213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openhearts/pseuds/openhearts
Summary: I do not have the research budget that DS I'm sure does (if I did I would research Cameron back into the damn season, but I digress), so I've taken the liberty of deciding just what effect antidepressants, lots of alcohol, and lots of Vicodin would have on a person. Post "The Episode Where House Gives Wilson SPEEEEEED"Originally posted at LIveJournal.





	

Cameron absently flipped channels, stopping on a romantic comedy out of sheer habit. She didn’t really want to watch it, but the melodrama lulled her into a familiar pattern. 

 

At the first commercial (after the fated meeting of the eventual lovers), she got up to get a glass – make it a bottle, it’s Friday – of wine. This was a sad, sad pattern, one she cut nearly weekly. Cheesy movie, wine, tears, bed. Alone. She hated herself for it. 

 

It was really emotional bulimia. Ritualistic binging and purging of her internal nemesis – that half of her that was a card-carrying member of the lonely hearts club. She could be doing the same thing at a bar, though it would cost more and would probably include some sporting event rather than a romantic comedy.

 

She realized, annoyed, that she _should_ be at a bar. What was stopping her? Well, aside from the dried tears crusted on her eyelashes and the fact that she’d already drank far too much wine to drive herself. But there was a pub a few blocks away. And even though it was cold, the aforementioned wine would keep her warm enough for the trip. And then she could pour some more liquid heat down her throat and feel it warm her belly and tingle through her fingers and toes. 

 

And maybe, for a while, she could get caught up in the people and the noises around her instead of on a screen and it would all just melt away for a moment and she wouldn’t feel so stupid. Maybe the annoying half of her would stop bugging the annoyed half of her and she could find a little peace in some space where she didn’t have to be a widow, a doctor, a daughter; wouldn’t have to be anything but tipsy and warm and quiet in the middle of a crowd.

_

 

 

Allison Cameron trudged, as much as a one hundred and fifteen-pound woman in stiletto heels can be said to ‘trudge,’ along the sidewalk. Her hands were jammed in fists into her coat pockets and her breath came out in visible puffs. She was grateful that, even though it was cold out, it hadn’t snowed for a few days, making the strappy sandals she wore out of place but not completely insane. She was also grateful that the nail polish on her toes had not worn off too much in the week since she’d polished them while sniffling in front of, of course, a sappy Lifetime movie. Dark crimson shimmery polish made her pale skin glow, but she couldn’t decide yet if it was luxurious or sickly looking. She didn’t wear open-toed shoes to work, so what did it matter?

 

She saw the corner bar, only another block away, and quickened her step slightly, her nearly numb feet crunching along on the salted concrete in what she was quickly deciding were two of the dumbest ideas she’d had since making House take her on that date. A date to which, she realized, she’d worn the same damn shoes.

 

Just the memory of that fact almost made her turn back in surrender to the lonely stupid girl she was sure she would never mature from, but the warm yellow glow coming from the windows of the bar and the din of music and conversation was like a siren song and she gritted her teeth and reached out a hand and opened the door with a decisive ‘whoosh.’ 

 

When she did, warm, humid air rushed out to envelope her, and a cold blast of the frosty night rushed in and slapped House squarely in the face as he strode, as much as a six-foot-two drunk man with a cane can be said to have strode, out the door.

 

For a split second, they almost could have passed each other without ever being the wiser. 

 

Cameron could have ducked her head and continued in to sit at the bar, order a glass of wine, and wait for something to change her life and how she felt about herself. What she probably would have gotten were a few unappealing pick up lines and a bill for more than the cost of another whole bottle of nicer Merlot had she just stayed home. 

 

House could have continued, bleary-eyed, out the door and to his car, which he shouldn’t have been driving but would, and home to succumb to more scotch and a stiff neck in the morning from passing out on his couch. Again.

 

She could have found nothing new and he could have refused the search for it, both stubbornly adhering to their self-serving, self-sabotaging patterns.

 

But House’s male instinct wouldn’t let him pass up checking out the woman in front of him, and his pause made Cameron look up just enough to see sneakers and a rubber-tipped cane.  

 

Something about that sight – the familiarity of seeing those items that were archetypal of House and only House – nearly brought tears to her eyes, and with that came the assurance that she hadn’t escaped the sappy movie in time to completely change her mood.

 

“Well well,” he slurred gregariously, “of all the bars in all the neighborhoods –“

 

“You’re walking out of mine,” Cameron finished, still standing outside with the door wide open and cooling the whole place down a few degrees. Someone would notice the draft soon and they would begin to draw attention. 

 

As she stepped inside and let the door swing shut behind her, she wondered how she’d come up with something so clever to say when her head still felt like it was stuffed with yards of dark red silk. She stood next to him, looking up at him with something she hoped resembled an embittered coyness. 

 

“Can I buy you a drink, little lady?” House was unusually cheerful, languorously sitting in this night, not accusing anyone or bitching about anything. It was kind of pathetic. Maybe this would be just the pick-me-up she needed.

 

“Sure,” she said with a smile, and let him follow her back to the bar, where she also let him clumsily pull out a stool for her before he hooked the handle of his cane on the edge of the bar and sat himself. She rested her forearms on the edge of the counter and stared at the rows of illuminated bottles, while House arranged himself in the same position, but kept his head turned to look at her.

 

“You look nice,” he sighed, she realized that this time, he wasn’t joking around. Because this time he caught himself and looked away quickly, not in a power-play, but to desperately trying to preserve himself. If he was blushing then it meant there was actual blood running through his veins, and not just scotch and vicodin residue as he would have everyone believe.

 

The bartender leaned into a woman’s cleavage at the far end of the bar, so there wouldn’t be an interruption for a while.  Cameron’s mind started ticking through the possibilities. House could just be his usual drunk and medicated, but that didn’t explain the mood, and the sustained goofiness. The vicodin could be in greater concentration in his system, but that was an opiate, and House’s attitude, at the moment, reeked of uppers. But House would never have taken uppers – being an angry version of Eeyore was his thing. 

 

House sighed beside her, and her eyes darted over to regard him suspiciously. He eyed her back, but there was no focus to his stare, no burning purpose. It unnerved her, the softness of it. 

 

She looked back to the safety of her hands folded loosely in front of her.  
  


“House,” she started, “why are you so . . .”

 

“Happy? Cheerful? Cuuuuuuute?” He intoned. He was nearly smiling for christ’s sake. “Well, I’ll tell you. Wilson – you know Wilson, right?”

 

Cameron blinked. “Yes, House, I know Wilson.”

 

“Okay. Well, _Wilson_ was yawning, see. And so I put some _speed,_ ” House shook his hands frenetically in midair for effect, “in his coffee the other day, and he got all _freaked out_.”

 

House paused, and Cameron stared, open mouthed, at him.

 

“You drugged Wilson because he was yawning?”

 

“Well, well yeah, but _then_ , it turns out – are you with me here? Because see, I put it in his coffee, but it turns _out_ , that _Wilson_ , was putting anti-fucking-depressants in my coffee for a week.”

 

Cameron stifled her laugh in her fist.

 

“So now,” she finished, “you’re on antidepressants and alcohol, and vicodin. Go Wilson.”

 

House glared at her.

 

“You think this is _funny_ , when someone fucks with your head like this?” he snapped, a little of his familiar defensiveness creeping into his voice and his expression. 

 

Cameron almost answered, but she paused. She looked at his eyes, and a tiny sliver of normalcy flashed in them but was gone again quickly after. She sighed sadly, the weight of the last three years came back to her shoulders. She let the stupid lonely girl talk, for the first time in a while, to him without a shred of pride left in her voice.

 

“No, it’s not funny. I know.” House didn’t catch her meaning. She stared into his eyes for a few moments, willing him to understand her without further explanation.

 

The bartender finally wandered over and took their orders. Scotch on the rocks for them both, his straight, hers with soda.  Cameron put on her big girl face again, and steered the conversation away. This was not how she wanted the night to go. She hadn’t known she’d hoped to see House, but now that she had seen him – kind of him, anyway – she realized she hadn’t wanted to be in a faceless crowd. 

 

She wanted to see him.   A little part of her mind searched faceless crowds for his distinctive shoulders, his layers of suit pieces and t-shirts, his smiles that, if you really watched, came more often than most people seemed to think. Granted, they weren’t as sappily loose as the one that was on his face at the moment, but they were there. He – a version of him – was there. She wanted the real thing. The scotch seemed to be doing it, though, bit by bit. For once she would knowingly encourage him to drink, to recede into himself and let dark thoughts into his mind. So that, since she would be there, she could distract him from them. Naturally. Cameron lifted her glass to her lips, rested it there a moment. She saw, briefly, in her mind’s eye, that his lips might be there tonight.

 

_

 

 

House pushed the door open with one hand and Cameron stumbled through, tripping over the threshold on her way. Her veins teeming with vodka, she veered around the corner and soundly stubbed her toe, in its specially-designed-to-be-sexy-and-alluring strappy sandal, on the corner of a bookcase. She squealed, dropping her purse as she collapsed onto the leather couch, clutching the offending digit in her hands. A moment later she was curled on her side, foot still clutched, still throbbing, but the squeal turned into a giggle and her other foot lolled against the corner of the coffee table.

 

As the night had worn on, Cameron had become sillier and sillier, and House had become more and more himself. By the time they limped out together to his car, their hastily pressed kiss as he held the passenger side door open for her was more of an expected forethought than a surprising, electrifying tingle of attraction. Cameron was half right, as his lips were only half on hers. Aiming was a bitch on strappy sandals and way too much alcohol.

 

House, having closed and locked his front door by sheer power of muscle memory, stood at the back of the couch, looking down at her with a begrudgingly bemused look on his face.   He never saw her like this – giggling, silly, drunk. Even through his still-tinged vision he noticed that. 

 

Cameron’s eyes focused on his, and she turned to lie on her back and look up at him. He bent and leaned his elbows on the back of the couch, cane leaning next to him, regarding her closely. She quieted and her breathing deepened. 

 

“I stubbed my toe.” She said quietly. Seriously. She was on the verge of pouting, which House saw slightly more often from her at work than giggling.

 

House gave a soft, throaty chuckle before pushing off the back of the couch and limping around to the front of it. He shooed her feet away and lowered himself down to sit at the opposite end of the couch from her. Cameron started to sit up, but House’s hand wrapping around her ankle stopped her. She froze for a moment, but her weak arms, which were attempting to push her into an upright and locked position, failed her, and she leaned back on her elbows. The leather couch cushions wheezed softly under her.

 

She realized through her haze that the tables had turned. He was past the giddy part of his buzz and on to the quiet dominance he displayed here and there, now inspecting her foot. Her buzz would keep her spinning for a while longer. She chalked it up to her relative inexperience, and that thought brought the next as she thought of other ways he must be more experienced than she. The inevitable flitted through her mind, of twitching against his skin, pulled hair, and bitten fingers to keep from screaming. 

 

The clatter of her sandal falling to the floor after he unbuckled it and eased it off her foot startled her, though she’d been watching his fingers the whole time. The other sandal clattered against the old wood floor a moment later. His fingertips on her skin were mesmerizing and unnerving. House inspected her now-tingling toe.

 

“This little piggy,” he said in a sing-songy voice, gently holding the toe between his other index finger and thumb, “is gonna hurt like a bitch when you sober up.”

 

Cameron found the strength to roll her eyes. “House, it’s just-“

 

“Uh, I think I might know a little bit more about drunken injuries than you, missy. I’ve had decades more experience than you have,” he reminded. Her thoughts tantalizingly confirmed, unbeknownst to him.

 

House had set her foot gingerly across his leg and was leaning to one side to pull a rattling pill bottle out of his pocket. 

 

“Not _decades_ ,” Cameron sighed, rolling her eyes in frustration this time as she watched him pop an unknown number of pills into his mouth and throw his head back to swallow. Just like he always did. The familiar motion blasted away her dirty thoughts and brought her back through the last three years and to this point again, which was further but still painfully different than she would have planned. 

 

Of course he was doing the same thing as always. He subtly made some non-move in her direction, then just as subtly pulled away, put distance between them again as quickly as drawing the next breath. It was a slap in the face every time he did it – stunningly fast, over nearly immediately, and leaving a stinging redness on her face that she could never hide. 

 

Cameron had never thought of herself as the type to be in an abusive relationship. But this wasn’t a relationship, anyway. He made sure of that. Her mind flitted over times she’d needled and pestered and probed him after the slightest flirtatious provocation on his part. She started the familiar pattern of kicking herself as she thought of her earnest, stupidly honest self, laid open for his reproach. And how he’d been so ready to give her what she was asking for with all those childish demands.

 

“Cameron?”

 

She shook herself out of her recriminations long enough to let her eyes focus on House’s fingers holding a pill in front of her face. He was holding that pill out to her, eyes glowing like neon, and the smallest smile tugging on his mouth. Stalwartly, she resisted. Why now, would she take anything he offered when it had been so much time tugging and pulling at him for anything other than he was giving her at the moment.

 

“I’m not taking a Vicodin for a stubbed toe, House.”

 

He rolled his eyes and shook the pill at her a little. 

 

“Come on, take it,” the light in his eyes changed, and he leaned even closer to her, resting his weight on one elbow on the couch cushions next to her waist. When he spoke again his voice was a whisper. She felt the sound of it in her head and between her thighs.

 

“It’ll make you feel good now, and it’ll take away the pain later. Take it.”

 

Cameron eyed him, and the pill. She realized, in a moment, that she’d been far too rigid before, and he’d been far too right. Instead of pulling this time, dragging him behind her into whatever territory she’d charted for them, Cameron did something different. She smiled to herself, secretly and quickly, before leaning forward slightly and taking the pill from between his fingers with her teeth. Her lips grazed his fingers before she leaned back again, tipping her head back and exposing her neck as she swallowed the pill. His pill. She licked her lips and smiled at the taste of his fingers.

 

House watched the delicate muscles of her throat undulate and he didn’t realize he reached out a finger and ran it, ever so lightly, down her throat, until he saw it happening. Cameron brought her head back up to meet his eyes and his fingertip continued to travel over the shallow between her collar bones, over her sternum and the plane of her stomach. He let his hand fall to her hip and linger, then, for a moment. 

 

A long moment. A moment ever-stretching, denying everything he wanted. Everything else about her he wanted to touch and feel and taste and claim, beyond that hip. For the moment, before she would, he was sure, pull away, break away, get away, walk away . . . for the moment that hip was his, and he stared at it under his hand. 

 

The pale skin, veins slightly visible between the hem of her shirt and the top of her jeans, was hot against his skin. He thought about that, how her skin was not even warm, but hot under his touch, hot under his skin, there for him to touch and feel.

 

“House?”

 

His eyes tore away from the hip to look at Cameron’s eyes. Before he could think of something to say, she smiled and reached out a hand to curl around his arm and pull him toward her. He reached for her and their lips met as they maneuvered to make themselves closer. He pulled himself up, and eventually they lay on their sides, him leaning on his left elbow, her head resting on his arm, and her leg wrapped around his good one, pulling him closer, provoking him to growl into her lips and clutch at her waist with his free hand.

 

For the longest, and yet shortest, amount of time they were high school kids on the sofa in somebody’s basement. Everything, every touch, every breath pulled from each other’s lips, every bump of their noses, every small, urgent moan at the back of the throat, was somehow brand new and intoxicating. 

 

Cameron reveled in it. She hadn’t been the teenager in the basement even when she was an actual teenager, so now, the delicious pain and absurd urgency of it was fascinating and ridiculously indulgent. House’s eagerness surprised and pleased her, as did how little it had taken to get him to give her something more than some pathetic remark with a straight face and a dead pan tone. 

 

Now that he was undeniably there, and nothing was up for interpretation or lost in foggy sarcastic interpretation, it was almost intimidating how his lips fought with hers for control, how his fingers grasped at her body, how her breath escaped in surprised little gasps, how her mind clouded with a hot, tingling fog. 

 

“Cameron.”

 

He said it in a rasping, raggedy-breathed whisper, but it was the same name as always.

 

“Huh?”

 

He’d said her name to get her attention. She’d suddenly seemed distant and he could tell, somehow, from the feel of her, from the way her breath was moving in and out of her, that she was Thinking About Things. 

 

He’d said her name to get her attention, but his was quickly drawn back to her neck and he tasted bits of it slowly, finding her pulse with his tongue, his lips, the tip of his nose. 

 

When he said her name a second time, partly to get her attention (again), and partly to call himself back to consciousness, his breath washed over her skin, punctuating his kisses and touches with a soft tickling heat that filled the pause between them.

 

Cameron, with closed eyes, breathed her words, rather than really pronouncing them.

 

“What?” Her hands stilled, but still rested on his shoulder and his back, memorizing how it felt when his muscles moved under her fingers.

 

His lips had stilled, but still rested on her neck, and he nuzzled slightly against her skin as he asked quietly, “Are you . . . okay?”

 

She smiled. Somehow she knew that was not what he was thinking, if the clench of her thighs around his was any indication, but the thought, while very un-House of him, was admirable. This was the remnants of Wilson on him. Soon it would all be gone from his system. She hoped it would anyway. Cameron was not interested in House Lite.

 

She brought his face up to hers and kissed him again. This time, Cameron fought back for control, and her impatience got the best of her as hands began to wander and she arched her hips against him.

 

“Stop.”

 

“What.”

 

“Just, stop a minute,” House repeated, starting to extricate himself from her twining limbs.

 

Her hands, now with a deadly force, stopped him.

 

“You have GOT to be kidding me. Are you seriously-“ her eyes blazed with anger and she willed him to defy her and see what he’d get. Which would not be much, if she could make herself resist.

 

“Bed, Cameron,” he cut her off, voice husky and entirely his own again. “I want you. In bed. Now.”

 

She melted slightly into the couch, but managed to help him get up by getting out of his way. 

 

She sat up, arms wedged on either side of her thighs and looked at her feet against his floor.  Suddenly she was shy, thinking of how she’d groaned and grinded and gasped against him in the previous few minutes. It felt weird, awkward, and irresponsible of her to be in her boss’s living room, hopped on vodka and Vicodin, and practically tossing off her pants for him without so much as a mention of what it could mean for them, their work, their lives.

 

His hand reached into her line of vision and she smiled silently and took it, but was careful not to use it to help her stand. She was aware that he didn’t have his cane and she didn’t want to pull him out of balance. 

 

He let go of her hand as soon as she stood, impossibly close to him, and scuffed off his shoes while she stared, again, at her bare toes. She was aware, without looking, that his leaning posture appeared casual and though she knew it was because of his leg it was insanely sexy. His button down shirt was open, the t-shirt underneath was snug to his torso, and his rumpled jeans hung on his hips, daring her to stare and want.

 

He ran a long finger along the strip of skin exposed by her wrinkled and twisted shirt and she shivered, bringing her arms to cross around her middle.

 

“Caaaaameron,” he whispered, right next to her ear. He slipped one hand around her waist and started trailing his fingers rhythmically over the small of her back. He breathed in the scent of her hair before she turned her face up to him, cheeks blazing pink. 

 

The question was in his eyes, but he wouldn’t ask it out loud. He could see, she knew he could, that now that she had him where she presumably had wanted him to be eventually, things were somehow different than she’d thought and she felt the need to evaluate. 

 

When she couldn’t meet those questioning eyes anymore, she stepped around him and walked toward their destination, letting her hand pass through his like water through a sieve.  
  
_


End file.
